The Elemedia venture of Lucent Technologies Inc claims to have cut audio bandwidth requirements by half with its new speech coder. This week it will release the new SX1200P speech coder software that, it says, has cut the bandwidth down to 1.2Kbps from the current low of 2.4Kbps for voice compression. This makes it ideal for voice on the Internet and multi-player video game applications, said Kalpana Sheth, director of marketing at Elemedia. The limited bandwidth available on a 28.8Kbps modem, for example, is not clogged up with audio, leaving more available for hungry graphics and video. The company did not have any clear results on the sound quality of the new product, however, but is testing it in the labs at the moment and believes the quality will be comparable with existing 2.4Kbps offerings. Elemedia reckons it has found a niche in the market as a provider of the whole range of Internet speech, music and video compression products to companies that build multimedia applications. The Murray Hill, New Jersey-based organization does not feel it has any direct competition. No one out there sells the whole range of speech compression and gateway server products. Most companies focus on applications, said Sheth. Elemedia is releasing two additional products next week. The SX2000P is a 2.0Kbps speech coder for higher quality voice when more bandwidth is available; and the SX9600P is a 9.6Kbps speech coder that delivers voice quality on local area networks indistinguishable from calls on the public telephone network, it said. Elemedia is now working on providing three dimensional audio coders that it expects to release around the end of the year.
Content from our partners
